The Poet Resigns: Essays on Poetry in a Difficult Time

Power and the Poetics of Play

219 Power and the Poetics of Play the meaning of play has been one of John Matthias’ most enduring poetic concerns. But just what his poetry has to say on the issue has been a matter of some controversy even among his ablest critics. For Jeremy Hooker, Matthias’ poetry is a celebration of play as a sign of human freedom. “Matthias the poet knows himself to belong to the species homo ludens,” writes Hooker in The Presence of the Past (103). Hooker refers, of course, to Johann Huizinga’s great study Homo Ludens, which puts forth the idea that play is “an activity which proceeds ...according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility” (132). In Hooker’s view, Matthias sets play up against the world of politics and power. Politics and power are realms of limitation and contingency, or, in Huizinga’s terms, necessity and material utility, while poetry is a realm of play and freedom. “There is more of Johann Huizinga’s philosophy of play...in Matthias’ poetry, claims Hooker, “than there is Marxism” (103). A younger critic, Jere Odell, takes issue with Hooker’s analysis, claiming “the terms of Hooker ’s dichotomy are unbalanced, stressing the playful aesthetic of Matthias ’ poetry at the expense of its utility” (41). In Odell’s view Matthias’ work doesn’t so much celebrate play as it “tests play as an aesthetic—trying to see if it is ultimately useless” (43). In the end, Odell finds the opposition of the realm of play and the realm of power to be an “unsteady 220 The Poet Resigns antithesis” in Matthias’ complex and ambivalent body of work (47). Play and power cannot be separated. Both critics are, surprisingly, correct—but only about specific periods in Matthias’ career. Hooker’s analysis appeared in 1987, Odell’s eleven years later, and the difference is significant: by the end of the twentieth century, the center of gravity in Matthias’ poetry had shifted from a position more like that described by Hooker to a position more like that described by Odell. Indeed, the trend has continued, and the unsteadiness of the antithesis between play and power has become increasingly prominent in the books of poetry Matthias has written since Odell’s essay appeared. While the periodization of a body of work as dense and complex as Matthias’ is, in some sense, a chump’s game, I do feel fairly confident in breaking down Matthias’ evolving sense of play into three distinct periods: an early period in which play exists separately from power in the manner described by Hooker; a middle period in which play is either co-opted by power or becomes a consolation for losses in the realm of power; and a later period, in which the differences between play and power blur, without one realm becoming subordinate to the other. The early period encompasses Matthias’ juvenilia and his first book of poems, Bucyrus; the middle period aesthetic of play is at its strongest in the poems of Turns, and the later period comes into fullest flower in two books: WorkingProgress,WorkingTitleand Kedging. The whole arc of Matthias’ decadeslong exploration of the meaning of play can best be summed up as the breakdown of the play/power dichotomy. Indeed, inasmuch as Matthias’ early proposal of a binary is later undermined, we can say that his career offers a deconstruction of the opposition of play and power. The earliest expression of a dichotomy of play and power in Matthias ’ work comes in a 1963 novella called By Way of the Ruins. This has never been published as a book, although parts did appear in the Stanford student literary magazine Sequoia and, much later, TriQuarterly published an extract under the title “Alto Luogo Ayasuluk.” The novella follows a young American protagonist to Turkey, and much of it is relatively undistinguished work in the manner of Henry James. It is of interest in the present context, however, in that it shows the stark opposition of play and power in the young Matthias’ imagination. Here, in 221 Poetry in a Difficult World a scene drawn from “Alto Luogo Ayasuluk,” we see two characters who represent the two sides of the dichotomy: The Turk goes through his routine of stands, balances, twists. He’s a very good acrobat. A talented acrobat, and he stares. He can juggle peaches, bananas, apples. He can do it both...